Maud's House

by Sherry Roberts

  “Quiche? What kind of place do they think this is? I don’t read French; I don’t cook French. What is this pomme frites, shit, Maud? French fries? That I can handle.”

  The special for the day was hamburger steak, mashed potatoes, and lima beans, so I was not surprised when Frank and Ella Snowden slid into a booth by the window. Hamburger steak was Frank’s favorite.

  Frank liked to sit with his back to the wall, so he could watch the door, he said. Ella always let him have his way, although, she said, she didn’t know who he expected to sneak up on them, Jesse James maybe, or some other desperado. I didn’t even bother to offer menus, just poured them two coffees and, five minutes later, plunked two specials in front of them.

  “Bon appetit.”

  “Maud,” Ella said, shaking out the paper napkin on her lap. “I’ve been wondering about this mural.”

  I sighed and leaned my hip against the booth.

  “I mean, I’ve been thinking what it needs is a nice little verse. Something typed up and hung beside it, the way they do in museums, sort of a poetic description.”

  “Ella, I haven’t agreed to paint the mural.”

  “But you must. We all know you can do it.”

  “It’s been a long time.”

  “Posh. Like riding a bicycle. Isn’t it, Frank?”

  Frank concentrated on his hamburger steak.

  “Well, it is,” Ella said. “You’ve just been a little lost the last few years what with your father dying and then George. None of us likes to see you like this, Maud. While I’m the first to admit Sheriff Odie Dorfmann is no reservoir of original thought, he had a good one this time. It was a godsend, and we’re not going to sit and let you pass it by.”

  “Who’s‘we’? You got fleas?” Frank said.

  Ella glared at him.

  I massaged my forehead. A headache with the rhythm of a jackhammer had been excavating my cranium all night. “I don’t know why everyone thinks they know what’s good for me.”

  “We care for you,” Ella said.

  “Ella, she doesn’t have to do it if she doesn’t want to.” Frank put down his fork. “You shouldn’t force her.”

  “I’m not forcing her. I would never force her. Maud’s like a daughter to me, Frank, and you know it.”

  Frank’s expression softened slightly. They had no children of their own. “You could write your poem even if she doesn’t paint the damn mural.”

  “But this would be my first published work, well, sort of published on a wall.”

  I touched her arm. “I really don’t think I can do it.”

  Ella removed her arm from my touch. “You used to not be so hard, Maud.”

  I glanced helplessly at Frank. He nodded at me.

  I sighed and left their table, passing Wynn and Harvey Winchester in the next booth. Harvey had five baby books piled on the table. He was so busy explaining to Wynn the importance of measuring cranium size in babies that he dipped his French fries in his drinking water instead of the ketchup; he slid the soggy fry between his teeth without noticing.

  In the kitchen, I headed for the storage room in the back. There, hanging on the wall, was a mirrored, white metal medicine chest. In the chest were aspirins. I sat on a fifty-pound bag of potatoes and swallowed two pills without water.

  George, what am I going to do?

  “You could get off your caboose and serve these fucking pomme frites, Maud,” the cook yelled.

  Five minutes to closing, a family of ten filed in and slid onto stools. There was a father and so many children they wrapped around the counter. The littlest looked to be around five. The oldest was a skinny boy with a face full of pimples. A younger brother on the stool next to him whispered something in his ear. He nodded and said, “In a minute.” They studied the menu, then, without a word exchanged, the father ordered one special and ten orders of fries. All ten reluctantly closed the menus. The oldest boy grabbed his brother’s hand and headed in the direction of the restrooms.

  “Drinks?” I said.

  “Water’ll be fine.”

  I turned in the order (“Again with the fries,” said the cook) and brought the water.

  “Passing through?” I asked.

  The man finished off his water in one gulp and nodded. I replenished his glass. “Thanks.”

  “Well, it’s a nice time of year for it. Where you from?”

  “West. Ohio.”

  “We had a bean farm,” said one of the children.

  “We’re going to be Mainiacs,” said another.

  “Sally!” said the weary father.

  “So you’re headed for Maine,” I said.

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  I glanced out the window. Their car, an old station wagon with Ohio license plates, was covered with dust. Murdered insects dangled from the grill and splattered the windshield. You couldn’t see out of the dirty back window, the car was so crammed with suitcases, pillows, and toys. There was no room for nine children.

  I strode into the kitchen and told the smart aleck cook to give me nine more specials. “Nine! In case you hadn’t noticed, Maud, I’m trying to clean up. It’ll be Christmas by the time I get this steam table closed down. And I got a date tonight.”

  “Ten specials in all, Casanova.”

  The weary father tried to argue. “Don’t be silly,” I said, “It would have all gone to waste anyway. Vermont’s health department regulations are murder on leftovers.”

  When the family was finished, I gave the father directions to Reverend Swan’s house. “He can put you up for the night. He won’t preach at you too much, but you might have to listen to his saxophone.”

  Round Corners Restaurant closed at eleven. It was Freda’s turn to mop. I gathered all the sugar containers on a tray, took them to a booth, and began filling them. Freda finished the floor first and plopped in the booth across the table from me. I screwed the lid on the last sugar container and we both swung our legs up on the seat and leaned back. Freda lit a cigarette.

  “Lewis Lee wants me to quit these things.” She frowned at the cigarette.

  “Wouldn’t be a bad idea.”

  She rested her head against the wall and blew a long stream of smoke, obviously thoroughly enjoying the cigarette. “You still mulling over Odie’s cultural mission.”

  “I don’t know why he didn’t run on a law and order platform like any normal sheriff and town selectman.”

  “A civilized populace is less likely to kill each other.”

  “As history has proven again and again,” I said, massaging my neck. “I wish I hadn’t voted for him.”

  Freda tapped the ash from her cigarette. “I always go for the write-in candidate. Every election I vote for Lewis Lee.”

  4. Cows Juggling Pine Cones

  About a week ago, I began painting cows.

  This is what it’s come to, George. Look what you’ve done to me.

  Udderly ridiculous. Cute, George. Tell Jack Benny he’s got nothing to worry about.

  Cows in baseball uniforms, pregnant cows, preaching cows, but still cows. Cows with spots, cows lying on couches, cows in trees. Lost cows. Cows taken to market, to the cleaners, for a ride. Cows eating spaghetti, cows blowing on saxophones, cows at a slaughterhouse choosing human livers and tongues. It ceased to be amusing after the third day.

  It’s a cow, George. I know it’s wearing a bikini and flip-flops.

  The cows were the most recent setback in my continuing struggle with paint and canvas. For years, I have followed the same routine. Perched ram-rod straight on a stool in my studio, I face the canvas. The door is locked. I am alone with a white surface of relatively small proportions. In a few hours, its blankness will grow to overwhelming dimensions like one of those baby bathtub dinosaurs that turn into Godzilla in the fish tank. Today, in effort to head off Godzilla, I created the Hatteras Holstein.

  I drummed my fingers on the nearby table. In the quiet studio, country music lovesickness wandered out of the radio in decibel
s guaranteed to damage the human ear. The studio, which is in the attic at the top of the house, vibrated to the beat of lonely hearts, cheatin’ hearts, achy breaky hearts. I imagined I heard a faucet dripping below, three flights down. I unlocked the door and ran down the stairs to check it. While I was in the kitchen, I drank a glass of water. I peered at the thermometer outside the window—forty-five degrees. I loaded the dishwasher. I considered washing the windows and cleaning underneath the refrigerator but decided that was going too far. I could not avoid it. I had to return to the attic. And sure enough, the cow was still there, sunning in all that bright blank canvas. Everything was exactly as I left it—waiting.

  I glanced at the clock. Two more hours to go, one hundred twenty minutes until I could stop. George and I agreed, that to give my work a fair chance, I ought to spend mornings in the studio. No interruptions. Turn the answering machine on. Forget about any work around the house. Until high noon.

  I don’t know why I’m still following your stupid rules, George. I suppose I don’t know what else to do.

  Poor George. He was right to leave. He got out while the getting was good. I was impossible to live with, still am.

  It needs sunglasses? You could be right, George.

  What does it mean? It doesn’t mean anything. Everything doesn’t have to mean something. God, you’re as bad as Wynn. You think too much.

  What else is there to do, where you are? I don’t know; take up a hobby.

  There. That’s what I mean. I was married to George for thirteen years, and each year I grew more and more unpleasant. A grizzly with a thumbtack in its paw would have been better company. I was never malicious or cruel. I was just… irreverent. I couldn’t seem to take anything, especially George, seriously. For example, I almost died laughing when he suggested I make a will.

  “Everyone should have a will, Maud, for the disposition of property,” according to George. I remember the morning. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the clock. That day I had awakened with a feeling, an urge to get up to the attic. I felt, almost, as if I could paint.

  “George, we’re young. We’ve got plenty of time.” I tapped my fingers on the counter, checked the clock again.

  “It’s never too early, when it comes to taxes or wills. What if we both die at the same time? Fall off the Appalachian Trail into a ravine and freeze to death. You don’t want the state to get everything, do you?”

  “If I’m a popsicle, who cares? George…” I glanced at the clock. George had installed an institutional-looking timepiece over the kitchen sink. He said kitchens always had clocks; how else could you tell how long to boil the pasta?

  “And if we go separately, without wills, things could be tied up in the courts forever. Lawyers’ fees would eat you alive.”

  “Then I wouldn’t need the will, would I? Sorry, George, I’ve really got to go.” I ran from the kitchen and up the back stairs, tripping over my own feet. I skidded around corners, fumbled with doorknobs. But, when I reached the studio, found a brush, set up the canvas, plopped on the stool, and pushed my hair out of my eyes… the feeling was gone.

  I came to think of George as a thief. He stole moments. And hearts. Sometimes I wonder what I saw in George. And then I remember how charming he could be, how his voice soothed people like Ella when she became harried and forgetful during the Christmas rush.

  George had ambition and a great body that moved with a planned quickness, like a stalking puma. I think he had political aspirations (although he never admitted to it and never actually set his sights higher than town moderator). In a calculated way, he wanted to be liked. And I didn’t help him a bit. I got drunk during his speech at the annual convention of the New England Association of Accountants and Tax Preparers. I never wore the correct clothes. (I was the only woman at the convention in black leather.) I wanted to make love at all the wrong times (such as in the elevator after the tax speech). George only made love at night, in the dark, on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Or so it seemed. Actually, we probably made love on the occasional Wednesday or Friday, but for the life of me I can’t remember a time. I only remember his voice.

  His voice, when he talked to me, always had a patient quality: “Now, Maud, you know that is inappropriate behavior.” Sesame Street jive. I deserved it, of course. I was horrible and lazy and worthless. George took over the cooking, mastering the gadgets he bought for me, the food processor and microwave oven and pasta maker. He read their instructions to the last letter. Manuals were George’s idea of bed-time reading. “You know, Maud, if we had a large enough microwave, we could probably defrost a whole cow in less than three minutes.”

  He wanted, more than anything, for me to be a great painter. “Realize your ambitions, Maud,” he said, standing surveillance over a bag of popcorn expanding its horizons in the microwave. He sniffed the air, which was filled with the warm smell of butter, and smiled. “Ambition is like the microwave; it radiates the inside and, soon, you’re cooking.”

  George encouraged me to spend hours at my art. If George had a fault, it was that he was too helpful. He organized my work space. Once it spread wildly about the farm like some kind of growing thing. George contained it in the attic studio. It was a dream studio. There were shelves and jars for everything. George cut a hole in the roof and put in a special window that let the light pour in from the sky; it was cathedral light, holy light.

  It was perfect.

  And impossible to work in. I spent all morning in there, until George came home for lunch. I listened to him start lunch, throwing the pork chops into the microwave. (George believed there wasn’t anything you couldn’t microwave.) And when I descended the stairs to gnaw on those chops with the mixed-up molecules, George knew by my expression it had been an unproductive morning. “Cheer up, Maud, you’ll get it right tomorrow,” he said. “I know you will.”

  “Probably,” I pushed aside the glass of milk he had poured and fetched a beer from the refrigerator.

  He was so patient. He should have left me much sooner than he did. I know he was tempted, especially during my criminal period. There was a time when I stole things. It lasted only a few months, at a time when I couldn’t even draw cows, and I was never caught. I took little things that I never remembered taking.

  George liked to drive into Burlington and catch the red light specials at one of the discount department stores. But for awhile there, maybe six months, whenever we walked out of the store, I found things in the pockets of my parka. Little digital alarm clocks that you stick on the dashboard of the car, earrings (clip-ons, not even pierced), a bottle of Calamine lotion.

  “Where did you get those, Maud?” George asked in his patient, grating voice.

  “I don’t know. They seemed to have just appeared in my pocket. Like magic.”

  “There is no such thing as magic, Maud.”

  The shoplifting never amounted to much and George kept down the proceeds by holding my hand in the store. We strolled through cosmetics, shoes, hardware, from one red light special to another, looking like lovers, avoiding crime. Petty larceny didn’t shake George’s cool.

  Actually, the only time he ever lost his temper with me, the only time I ever went against his wishes, was when I took the job at the Round Corners Restaurant. I became a waitress because it gave me an excuse not to be an artist. Although I still entered the attic every morning and played chicken with a white piece of canvas, my life didn’t revolve around cows in flip-flops anymore (or their equivalent subject matter back then). I expanded my horizons to cooked cow: smothered steak and filet mignon.

  George disliked my new career move because it wasn’t “furthering my artistic goals,” as he put it, and because it was there I met Freda Lee. Freda Lee irritated George with her talk of soap operas and afternoon sex with Lewis Lee. She was so busy having fun with Lewis Lee, she was oblivious to the other things that made the world go around—the depression, the anger, the deviousness. I liked her immediately.

  Lewis Lee was the center of her li
fe, her focus, her salvation. She supported him and three children on what she made at the restaurant. Lewis Lee seldom worked. Everyone, except Freda, called him lazy. Lewis was not a well man, she said. And he had the paperwork to prove it. Lewis Lee always found a doctor somewhere to swear he was sick or at the very least possibly dying. One time he had to travel all the way to Boston (and in his condition) for a reasonably poor prognosis. Still, Lewis Lee was Freda’s life. He was the air she breathed. And, in my mind, that was job enough.

  Freda’s sensuality slid over her body, fitting her tiny waist and lush hips; it whispered, like her tight polyester waitress uniform, as she walked. She fascinated men with her blonde hair, soft skin, and easy-going temper. She laughed, turned down their offers, dodged the occasional wandering hand. It wouldn’t occur to her to take them seriously. She was so wrapped up in Lewis Lee she wasn’t even aware she was flashing signals hot enough to melt the sky on a cold, snowy night.

  George considered Freda a bad influence, contributing to my already tenuous grasp on respectability. “Don’t be so stuffy,” I told George, balancing a large, glossy coffee table book (The Joy of Impressionism, I think) on my head. Since the Impressionism text was no great challenge, I also juggled four pine cones. Pine cones were tricky. The spikes, you know.

  George did not juggle, and the only books he balanced were his clients’. He was particular about appearances, his clothes, his ideas. He hated to wear the same pair of underwear two days in a row when I forgot the laundry. And he cringed when I became loud at softball games.

  “Kill the sucker, George! All right! No batter no batter no batter. Wooooeeee!” George sought dignity even in spikes. We drove home from those games, George staring straight out the windshield, tight-lipped; me coming down from that boy-did-we-slaughter-them high and miserably remembering all the rotten things I’d said about the other team’s mothers.